(updated April 2025)
Global survey shows simple solutions to common web accessibility errors
Simple things make the biggest improvements in the world of web content accessibility.
Each year, the WebAIM Million report reveals the most common accessible content errors on the world’s top websites. The comprehensive snapshot of web accessibility shows slight improvements as web owners gain a better understanding of how best to serve all site visitors. But it also reveals that some common accessibility errors keep turning up.
Most of these accessible content errors don’t require big technical fixes. By building simple processes into web content creation, you can make a tremendous difference for people with disability who want to access your site.
What is the WebAIM Million?
The WebAIM Million is an accessibility analysis of the world’s top one million home pages. Produced by American web accessibility non-profit organisation WebAIM, it reports on web accessibility barriers and instances where sites fail international accessibility guidelines.
The 2025 study found an average of 51 accessibility errors on each of the million home pages analysed. The good news is that this figure dropped by 10.3% since last year’s poll. But there’s still room for improvement with the same handful of common errors topping the list. In order of frequency, the top 5 errors are:
- low-contrast text (79.1% of home pages)
- missing image alt text (55.5%)
- missing form input labels (48.2%)
- empty links (45.4%)
- empty buttons (29.6%).
The latest survey also found a steady increase in home page complexity with the average number of elements growing 61% over the past 6 years. Elements are all the things that make a page; the text, images, buttons, forms, videos, links and menus. The report says people with disability can expect to encounter an error in one in every 24 of these elements when navigating a home page.
The WebAIM Million survey uses a detection tool to pick up home page errors. But it can’t detect all errors. This means the number of actual accessibility issues is likely to be greater than reported.
Why don’t more sites have more accessible content?
Common reasons people give for not making their websites more accessible include:
- it’s too difficult
- I don’t have time
- I don’t know any disabled people
- we don’t have disabled people using our site
- it takes too long
- I don’t have the skills.
Given more than one in 5 Australians identify as having disability, it’s likely that you do in fact know someone who would appreciate better web accessibility. There are also those who don’t identify as disabled, and those who experience temporary or situational disability. Perhaps a broken arm makes it difficult to use a mouse, or a noisy environment presents hearing challenges.
Making content accessible is why the internet exists
Web accessibility is about designing and developing websites to make content available to anyone who wants to access it.
The Web Accessibility Initiative of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) develops international standards for web content accessibility with individuals and organisations around the world. They are known as the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG).
In Australia, web accessibility is embedded in our Disability Discrimination Act (1992). While Australian government agencies must meet WCAG 2.1 Level AA as a minimum, the new Digital Experience Policy introduced in January 2025 further enhances these requirements with additional standards for digital inclusion, access and performance.
Organisations and non-profits, especially those working with government agencies, are encouraged to align with these standards to ensure their digital services are accessible and inclusive for all Australians.
Simple accessibility solutions to big accessibility problems
Building a fully accessible website begins in the planning and development stages. But that doesn’t mean you can’t improve your existing website. Many of these fixes require little more than time. You can start today by building accessibility into your everyday content processes.
- Add alt text every time you upload an image to your site.
- Use an online tool to check the contrast of your text colour against the background.
- Describe links so users know where they lead.
- Get familiar with heading tags to structure your content so screen readers can make sense of it.
- Ditch flashy graphics and keep things simple to avoid complexity errors.
A communication specialist who understands web content accessibility can do this for you, or help set up your processes. Improving accessibility is about improving the user experience. And that’s good for all your site’s visitors.
‘Addressing just these few types of issues would significantly improve accessibility across the web.’
WebAIM Million Report, 2025
Colour choices matter for accessible web content
How often do you check colour combinations for accessibility? This refers to how well a text colour stands out against its background. To comply with the WCAG 2.1 AA standards, colour contrast ratios for text against background should be 4.5:1 for standard body text and 3:1 for larger text (14pt bold or 18pt regular). These ratios measure the difference in perceived brightness between two colours to ensure readability.
Globally, one in 12 males and one in 200 women experience some form of colour blindness. Certain colour combinations create particular problems for people with colour blindness, such as red/green and blue/yellow.
Various free online tools let you test the contrast ratios of your colour combinations. Many of these help you adjust the colours so they pass accessibility standards. WebAIM has a contrast checker on its site, while Vision Australia also has a colour contrast analyser.
Organisation often hit colour contrast hurdles if their brand design process did not consider accessibility. These organisations may end up with brand colour palettes that fail the accessibility test when used to produce web or printed content. If you are developing a new brand or considering a rebrand, include accessible colour combinations in the planning and design process to save you headaches down the track.
While logos and other decorative or artistic elements don’t need to meet colour contrast requirements, consider why they are on the page. If it’s for visitors to perceive them, they might as well be as accessible as possible along with the rest of your content.
It’s also important to not rely on colour alone to convey information. For example, there’s a trend towards links that appear with different coloured, or bolded, text but no underline. If visitors can’t perceive that colour difference, they won’t know the text is a link.
Alternative text makes images more accessible
Images and graphics are a great way to break up text, convey information in different ways, and make a page look more appealing. But problems arise when the images don’t have alternative text. Alternative text, or image alt text, is important because it:
- enables screen readers to announce details of the content for people who have visual or cognitive impairments
- describes what should be there if an image doesn’t load
- supports SEO by helping search engines understand and rank page content.
According to the latest WebAIM Million report more than one in 3 home page images had missing alt text. Of these, 44% contained links without a description. This means users could be taken somewhere unexpected, creating a disorientating user experience.
Of the images that did have alt text, 13.4% had unhelpful descriptions such as ‘image’, ‘graphic’ or an indecipherable file name.
It’s easy to make images accessible on your website. It takes less than a minute to fill in the alt text box every time you upload a new image to your site. Just remember to:
- keep it brief but helpful
- describe its purpose on the page
- if the image contains a link, include that information in the alt text
- if the image is decorative and adds no value, no alt text is needed
- leave out ‘image of’ or ‘picture of’ because the screen reader alerts the user to what an element is
- only include SEO keywords if they benefit the description.
Give buttons and form labels purpose
The WebAIM Million found 48.2% of home page forms had missing form field labels. It also found 29.6% had empty buttons.
Accessible forms have labels that describe each field and are not overwritten once the user starts to fill in the form. Error messages should also be easy to understand and not colour dependent. If your form is long, add an option for users to save where they’re up to, so they don’t have to start again if they’re interrupted part way through.
Button wording need to be clear and descriptive so users know what they are and what to do with them. Instead of ‘click here’ or ‘read more’, choose words that are concise, distinctive and task-specific.
Sometimes links are styled to look like buttons. While they might look similar, the functionality is different. If an element allows a user to submit an action, it is a true button. If it takes the user to another web page, it is a link.
Empty or ambiguous links cause navigation problems
Screen readers let users scan a page, providing a list of links to select from. If the link text or code does not make its purpose or direction clear, it can create confusion and frustration for your site’s visitors.
Empty links have no, or incomplete, functional information to explain where they lead. The most common types of empty links include links behind images and icons, and links that are accidentally deleted while editing content online.
Ambiguous links are those that provide no, or inadequate, description. Link text such as ‘read more’, ‘click here’, or ‘see details’ are repetitive and unhelpful. So-called naked links, which use the URL itself as the anchor text, are also inaccessible as they don’t provide enough information about the link’s purpose.
As well as supporting assistive technology users, descriptive links help all site visitors. Eye tracking technology shows humans scan pages for clickable items; a process known as ‘information foraging’. Vague wording on links means your site’s visitors need to take more time to figure out what a link is for, which can lead to frustration.
Structure headings for accessible navigation, not graphic design
Tagged headings are important because they are the main way screen readers navigate web content. While the use of these headings increased 4.6% in the past year, the incidence of skipped headings was also higher. This means that while tagged headings were present, they were not organised correctly.
When setting up headings on web pages, don’t rely on styling such as bold and different font sizes. Proper heading structure is marked in HTML with an ‘H tag’. These tags are numbered from one to 6 and must be used in sequential order to be effective.
If you use a block editor, such as in WordPress, pay attention to the style you choose for text modules.
Choose Heading 1 (H1) for your main page heading. H1 usually contains the focus SEO keyword for the page, indicating the main topic and purpose of the page for screen readers and search engines. Each page of your site should have only one H1.
Choose Heading 2 (H2) as your subheading, using it to further explain the page’s purpose. Ideally, each page should also have only one H2 heading, although this will depend on your site’s content style and structure.
After setting the H1 and H2, you can use as many of the others as you need to organise your content. You don’t need to use every heading level. Just remember to use them sequentially so they’re useful to screen readers.
This means, for example, you shouldn’t use an H4 if you have not already used an H3. Heading hierarchy needs to correspond with the content hierarchy. W3C has detailed information to help you better understand heading tags.
Accessible content is also good for organic search results
Making your content accessible not only benefits users with disability and makes things more convenient for others, it also enhances your site’s visibility and performance in search engines.
Better user experience: when more people can access your content it leads to higher engagement and longer time spent on your site, which is a ranking signal to the search engines.
Better indexing by search engines: accessible websites are easier for search engine crawlers to index, with features like image alt text for images and proper heading structures assisting search engines to understand your content better.
Enhanced metadata: using clear and descriptive titles, meta descriptions, and anchor text not only helps users but also improves your site’s SEO by making it easier for search engines to understand the relevance of your content.
Higher search rankings: accessibility best practices often equate with SEO best practices, leading to improved search rankings and increased organic traffic.
Improve content processes for better web accessibility
Each year, the WebAIM Million report shows slight improvements in content accessibility, with the government, education and non-profit sectors often doing best. But these gains could be far greater if more people made regular small changes to their everyday content processes.
- Add alt text to each new image you upload.
- Use correct heading structure on your new pages and blog posts.
- Check that your colour combinations meet accessibility guidelines.
- Make sure links describe where they lead.
- Label form fields and button.
Every bit helps in creating content that is accessible and inclusive to everyone.
If you have more time and interest, consider taking W3C’s Digital Accessibility Foundations free introductory course.
